Penile Politics
Several years ago, I met Jackson Katz at a fundraiser for the film “Hijacking Catastrophe.” He was featured in a few films by Sut Jhally and the Media Education Foundation about masculinity and violence, and I was making a fair amount of noise about this association, too; so Sut introduced us, and we started talking about masculinity-messages that were used by political campaigns. These are messages that spotlight the masculinity (defined as the ability to kick-some-ass, to humiliate the enemy, and to set the world right through redemptive violence), and-or impugn the masculinity of one’s opponent.
Jackson described a Texas billboard he has seen during the Bush-Kerry election contest that featured a cowboy boot alongside a plastic shower shoe (called in the vernacular, a flip-flop). Not only was the pun apparent, it was reinforced by the phallic columnarity of the boot, standing erect, and the outline of labial folds made by the inverted-Y thongs of the now receptive flip-flop. Sexual aggression versus sexual receptivity. In men’s prisons, this distinction determines who will be seen as real men (jockers) and lady-men (bitches). Apparently, the same trope functions effectively in the wider world of public relations and electoral campaign strategy.
A popular put-down these days – one that has been enthusiastically adopted regardless of age, ethnicity, or class – is, “I’m gonna make you my bitch.” On popular television programs, I have even seen this used by women – addressed to men – as a way of doubling the male’s humiliation.
No polemical sortie is more effective during any election campaign than putting a male candidate’s masculinity – defined as aggression, even the ability to take life – into question. He is “soft” on crime, or he is “soft” on “welfare queens,” or “soft” on terrorism, or “soft” on foreign policy.
I call this penile politics.
During last night’s “debate” (if that is what we call these alternating sound bytes), Obama had an uphill climb after some fatigue or distraction had misled him into a torporous passivity during the preceding “debate.” His performance (puts me in mind of that pomo business of “gender permformativity”) was lackluster; he lacked aggression; he was too soft.
[None of this has much to do with actual policies, since neither candidate is actually considering such sideshows as policy during an election. Policy talk is tactical, not representative of any real intent, and largely determined by managers who groom and coach and drill each performer to make the most of the latest focus group research. Both will fall in behind the money after the game is over. But I digress.]
Since a debate affords no opportunities to pose with chainsaws or guns, however, the next best thing is a body count. In this, Obama enjoys a tremendous advantage in penile politics. Obama earned his bones within hours of assuming the presidency by ordering drone strikes that killed at least 20 people (combatant status unknown… to this day). But Obama secured that most important probative accoutrement for masculinity – a trophy – midway through his term; and this was the trump card last night in the penile politics follies of 2012. Obama made the point, “Osama bin Laden is dead.” He, of course, points this out a lot – often to the wild chants of “USA!” by Obama supporters, who just four years ago were incensed at George W. Bush (apparently for aesthetic reasons, since the actual policies of Obama have been extremely similar to those of Bush, and often more aggressive at expanding wars and effacing civil liberties).
If only I had the resources, I would set up a public information website that tracks penile politics. It would sift through political talk all over the US and abroad, seeking out these direct references to dominator-masculinity in puffing up one male candidate or throwing the masculinity of an opponent into question.
Women, of course, are already at a disadvantage – being biologically vaginated; but the answer has been, in the case for example of Hillary Clinton, former candidate and now Secretary of State, to out-man the men in bloodlust. Secretary Clinton had no problem voting for every war that has come along, and she personally supervised the US actions surrounding the coup d’etat against the democratically elected government of Honduras. If you don’t mind killing people, honorary masculinity is waiting for you, sisters! Yay, liberal equality!
Spin-meisters have already given the “debate” to Obama. The bin Laden trophy is big penis points.
michele:
i am sorry that my comment is not going to be topic-specific; other than to say that the penis was a recent topic of interest for me in relation to a local outcry here in Vienna over some publicly-displayed posters. i find it abhorrent that women’s body parts can be objectified and that the penis continues to be “mystified”..but that aside for now. Stan, i was worried about you. You disappeared from my friends list, and the site was inaccessible for me for many days. i am so happy to see this post, to know you are obviously still out there sharing your wisdom. My best to you and yours~
18 October 2012, 8:51 amMichael Anderson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=agUx79yG1Lo
Got this in the mail yesterday from a military in-law (Air Force, daughter in USAF academy in Colorado Springs)—-timely! SOFA (SpecOps), “Never Bow Down.” The commenters on the Youtube video are indicative of the mindset. Racist, misogynistic, and domineering. They believe in American Exceptionalism. And not bowing down to brown people.
The “War Penis” picture here is great—-piloted by a long-haired “lefty” looking guy. A 105mm penis—what sexually liberated enlightened male child of the universe doesn’t want one, eh?
18 October 2012, 10:11 amLawrence:
Hey Stan, did you leave facebook? If so, I’m sad because I reposted tons of your stuff…thanks for blog post, agree completely!
18 October 2012, 4:49 pmMichael Anderson:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/22/julia-gillard-poll-misogyny-speech?CMP=EMCNEWEML1355
I found this interesting. Is it relevant? Gillard deposed Kevin Rudd as PM in 2006.
The sentence farther down on social media is revealing…
“More than 2 million people have viewed the video of Gillard’s speech in which she told Abbott that if he wanted to know what a misogynist in modern Australia looked like he should look in a mirror. The prime minister also tore strips off Abbott for standing in front of signs outside parliament urging voters to “Ditch the witch” and others which described her as another man’s “bitch”.
“I was offended by those things. Misogyny, sexism, every day from this leader of the opposition,” Gillard said.
In the days that followed the speech, Abbott accused Gillard of playing the gender card and of having double standards on sexism after she refused to sack the (now former) parliamentary speaker, Peter Slipper, for sending vulgar text messages.
Much of Australia’s mainstream media criticised Gillard’s speech as a political disaster. By contrast, social media largely praised the prime minister, something more in line with the latest poll results.
Following the heated debate on sexism and misogyny Australia’s most authoritative dictionary, the Macquarie Dictionary, broadened its definition of misogyny to include “entrenched prejudice against women” rather than “pathological hatred”. It brought it in line with the complete Oxford dictionary, which changed its definition in 2002.”
22 October 2012, 9:35 amHenry:
The Real Reason America Is Drifting Towards Fascism
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/10/the-real-reason-america-is-drifting-towards-fascism.html
22 October 2012, 2:32 pmHenry:
The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2012/10/the-payoff-why-wall-street-always-wins-jeff-connaughton.html#comment-61114
22 October 2012, 2:44 pmPhil:
Using the phrase “biologically vaginated” is essentialist and transphobic. Apart from that, you wrote an insightful post.
23 October 2012, 5:08 pmStan:
So women do not have vaginas? Vaginas are not in any way biological (I’m betting you passed through one during birth, a very biological process, no?, unless you were a C-section baby)?
Constructivist essentialism-hunting. Alive and well, and headed to Absurdistan.
By transphobic, do you mean I fear people who are sexually dysphoric? So not true. Or that I judge trans folk? Not true either. But that doesn’t mean I can’t or don’t disagree with the predominant academic trends on gender (ahistorical and disembodied). And that doesn’t mean I am going to cop to the whole pomo fantasy that there are no such things as men and women aside from social constructs. I do say, as suggested above, that one can never be a biological man in male dominant society without being formed by the expectations of masculinity. But that’s different.
The whole essentialist/anti-essentialist argument strikes me as a rehash of nurture versus nature – another false dichotomy.
24 October 2012, 6:51 amm.c.:
@Henry
RE: The Real Reason America is Drifting Towards Fascism
Carl Schmitt later in life as an Authoritarian ultra-Conservative Catholic was fond of the regime of Franco’s Spain.
I remember reading something that Schmitt was the originator in the 1920s or 1930s of the legal concept of(in German of couse. What is Bandit & Pirate in German?) the Bandit, or Pirate. That is, like the modern Terrorist & Terrorism; the Bandit is totally outside the Law. Whether he is an external enemy of the State or an internal one makes no difference. Leo Strauss learned a lot from Schmitt. They both hated the Weimar Republic. Nazi Germany and Franco’s Spain were two Regimes which completely marginalized their opponents.
Notice that in the last few weeks, the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi Libya which killed the US Ambassador & 3 other Consulate officials. First it was an armed Riot, a Mob which got out of hand in response to an anti-Islamic film? Maybe??? But the partisans on the Right who want to use it as a Wedge for the Presidential Election; keep demanding from the White House that it was A TERRORIST ATTACK by Al-Qaeda. The President is Soft because he didn’t claim on the lawn of Rose Garden one minute after the Attack that it was done by Terrorists! The U.S. Doesn’t negotiate with Terrorists, or Bandits, or Pirates…. Keep going to the Right Politically until there isn’t anywhere more to go.
25 October 2012, 4:10 pmm.c.:
Its fairly intuitive that there is a class/income perspective to living in an anti-Libertarian State/Authoritarian State if you will. A large bureaucratic criminal/civil justice surveillance system requires employees. It also creates a demand for lawyers of all kinds, including defense attorneys. The best defense attorneys like top-notch surgeons & physicians, whether they do DUI cases or divorce, tend to be expensive and time consuming. The wealthy are the best off if & when it comes time to hiring one. Everyone else tries to afford one by getting a second mortgage on their home or end up with an overstressed & overworked public defender. The Law isn’t Blind. Representing Yourself in Court is theoretically possible but put in gambling terms, a Long Shot Fairy Tale.
26 October 2012, 12:42 pmMichael Anderson:
One more on Julia Gillard. It appears she’s another Hillary Clinton, administratively and in the real militaristic sense. Australia has 40% of the world’s uranium.
One other thing—Kevin Rudd issued a formal apology to the aborigines for the extermination of their race. It appears Ms. Gillard is of a different mind.
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/12333-making-the-world-a-more-dangerous-place-the-eager-role-of-julia-gillard
“…On October 5, the Australian Nuclear Free Alliance (ANFA), which includes Aboriginal groups from across the country, gathered in Alice Springs. They called for a moratorium on all uranium mining and sales. Indigenous women made a special plea to Gillard, recently ordained by the white media as a feminist hero. No response was expected….”
An atom bomb is the ultimate big dick….remember Slim Pickens riding the bomb down in “Dr. Strangelove?”
26 October 2012, 1:35 pmHenry:
Chomsky: America Acts Like It Owns the World, While Endangering the Planet from Nuclear War and Climate Change
October 26, 2012 |
Note: In a recent speech, Professor Chomsky examined topics largely ignored or glossed over during the campaign, from China to the Arab Spring, to global warming and the nuclear threat posed by Israel versus Iran. He spoke last month at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst at any event sponsored by the Center for Popular Economics. His talk was entitled “Who Owns the World?” Democracy Now! transcribed Chomsky’s talk.
http://www.alternet.org/print/world/chomsky-america-acts-it-owns-world-while-endangering-planet-nuclear-war-and-climate-change
27 October 2012, 2:07 pmrb:
I just learned that Jackson Katz has a new book coming out, on politics and masculinity, called Leading Men.
27 October 2012, 2:16 pmMichael Anderson:
….@Henry
RE: The Real Reason America is Drifting Towards Fascism
Good article. The church of Schmitt (Catholicism) is definitely broken, and I’ll be brazen in suggesting it was broken when (and by the time) it was incorporated by the faltering Roman Empire as the State church. Authoritarian, Patriarchal, and an instrument of power, the perfect religious organization for the advancement of Fascism, which seems to have been the real “victor” in WW2, which was a tipping point (not a paradigm shift).
It is very hard NOT to dehumanize these people.
29 October 2012, 1:58 pmStan:
As someone who regularly attends a Catholic Church, I have to say that this is not the whole story. This is also the church of Francis of Assissi, Mother Theresa, Oscar Romero, Edith Stein, and Dorothy Day. I hope no one is inclined to dehumanize me.
30 October 2012, 6:21 amm.c.:
Michael,
The Nazi’s put lots of Catholic dissidents in jail & worse. Many were Labor Union members, Communists, Social Democratics, Centrists, and even Conservative Nationalists. Carl Schmitt was an outlier socially and politically; but there is a strain of fascism(i.e. Spain under Franco, Mussolini’s Italy) in the Church. The official Nazi party was more represented by conservative anti-communist Lutherans, the national majority.
30 October 2012, 12:18 pmNight Washman:
Having been raised a Catholic and having left the church it took me a long time to figure out why some stay with it.
30 October 2012, 1:20 pmI think I have it figured out. I think those that stay see the Church as being bigger than (more than) it parts.
I think they see it as being bigger than its formal doctines. I think that they see it as something bigger than its
customs.
Stan:
Church means people of God. Catholic means universally available to all. A billion people cannot be reduced to a changing Papal Curia. And I’m not trying to be defensive. I am working on a book right now that details many of the crimes of the institutional church.
As to brokenness, the doctrine of Christianity is that the world itself is broken (this is a theological, not mechanical or sociological one). In a broken world, a church made of broken people will be a broken church. This is freely acknowledged by Christians, by and large. That does not change the proclamation of faith, nor does it set aside our responsibilities.
But when we say the church, or the Roman Catholic church, or any other church, we have to remember that these were all the same, single church prior to schisms and Reformation. If you follow the tradition back, it will pass through what is now the Roman church. And as Michael points out, one major turning point preceded all the others; the legalization of the church by the Roman Emperor Constantine, and his nominal conversion. It was actually the later Theodosius who made Christianity the ‘official religion.’ and it was 200 more years before the church ever systematically persecuted heretics… under Justinian, who – naturally – was a military leader by practice, and who had dreams of restoration of the former empire. In this, Justinian was similar to Napoleon, with Justinian homogenizing the population into a single polity by dint of religion, and Napoleon by language.
The church did not opt – as Christ had – to take the way of the cross. On the contrary, the church adapted to the successor regime of those who had executed Jesus. Whether a heresy was any real threat to secular or clerical power is not altogether clear this many centuries later.
What is clear is that the church was rapidly becoming the only people with the literacy, administrative experience, and moral standing to legitimate power. Many of the rulers throughout Europe prior to the final Christianization of Europe were themselves either Germanic or heavily influenced by Germanic culture. Most political leaders were barely literate. Rome itself fell, according to some simple historical formulae, because in this arrangement of legitimation from church and governance from military powers, power was separated institutionally from authority. (The nation-state would eventually resolve this contradiction, with the active assistance of the church; but it would also result in Christians shooting other Christians in a series of wars between nation-states.)
The church, in its alliance with power since Constantine, now found itself the most stable political force in Europe, where borders and rulers were changing with the seasons. The church, in other words, had trapped itself into a kind of political responsibility that was never anticipated by the early church, and one that now forced the militarily powerless church to align itself with worldly leaders – taking in many cases what appeared to be the lesser of several evils. In this way, the church used its own accumulation of power to eventually become the servant not of “the least of them,” but of states.
30 October 2012, 3:32 pmMichael Anderson:
@ m.c.:
“The official Nazi party was more represented by conservative anti-communist Lutherans, the national majority.”
Thank you. An interesting bit of history, and perhaps I need to read more on this, because I had thought that the Catholic Church was lined up pretty solidly behind National Socialism.
@ Stan:
“Catholic means universally available to all. A billion people cannot be reduced to a changing Papal Curia.”
True. I’ll read your book—-you’ve done some history homework.
31 October 2012, 2:31 pmm.c.:
Michael,
Colonel General Claus von Stauffenberg(1907-1944; the Tom Cruise character in the 2008 film Valkyrie) was a practicing Roman Catholic according to wikipedia.
Cardinal(the top ranking Roman Catholic in Germany) & Bishop of Munster Clemens August Graf von Galen(1878-1946) was another public outspoken Catholic against the Nazi regime.
There were some high ranking Catholics in the regime. Joseph Goebbels(1897-1945) was probably the highest ranking. Wikipedia says his family were Catholics. I haven’t looked everyone up but if you took the top 10 Nazis; the top 20 Nazis, etc… I bet the percentage % of Roman Catholics would be < 50%, probably about 1/3 rd. IMO. I would even count the early Nazis like Erich Ludendorff, Paul von Hindenburg, and runaways like Rudolf Hess.
Wikipedia claims there are about 25 million Protestants in Germany(the vast majority Lutheran) and about 24.5 Roman Catholic. I don't know what the breakdown was in the 1920's and 1930's.
1 November 2012, 12:28 pmm.c.:
Michael,
Gregor Strasser(1892-1934) and his brother Otto(1897-1974), both Roman Catholics, were early high ranking Nazi officials and leaders of the Socialist faction(left wing Beefsteak Nazis. Brown on the outside, red on the inside. They also represented a part that was opposed to anti-Semitism in the Party.)
1 November 2012, 2:20 pmGregor was considered such a rival to Hitler that Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher, the Weimar Republic’s last Chancellor before Hitler tried to lure Gregor Strasser into his government by offering him the Vice-Chancellor job(then the #3 post in government.) Both Gregor Strasser and Kurt von Schleicher were murdered during the Night of the Long Knives in 1934. Otto Strasser managed to escape from Germany, where he continued to oppose the Nazi Party publically.
askod:
Talking about penile politics a topic cropped up today in a conversation.
As far as I can tell, we know a lot about the image of violence and the image of masculinity. We know a lot about what using violence on others relates to and enforces the self-image of masculinity. We know a lot about how being subjected to violence for women relates to the self-image of femininity. We know very little about how being subjected to violence for men relates to the self-image of masculinity. And yet men are the ones to suffer most violence (at the hands of almost only other men).
Anyone know about any studies that has looked into the topic of men as victims of violence and the relationship to masculinity?
1 November 2012, 2:37 pmStan:
Not sure the concept masculinity (as I use it, not as a stylistic choice, but a set of cultural expectations to be met by men) is an easy one to test; but my own sense (as a male who has a few times been subject to male violence) is that for men, this feeds into fear (as violence does for women, too), though with a different outcome for men than for women. Men are in many says expected to prove themselves in one form or another of present-day agon. So what we might initially experience with the trauma of an attack from another man (as one example) is not only trauma, but a certain shame at being victimized that is specifically related to one’s idea about himself as a male. So we sublimate that fear, if that is the right word, into being a fear of the loss of standing as a male that is more powerful than the fear of other men.
I’ll be the first to admit that I feel more anxious around a group of strange men (with some obvious exceptions for age and ability) than I do around a group of strange women. That potential for male aggression is always there, and my own experience of other men and myself in groups with other men only confirms this anxiety. Human beings all carry the potential for violence; but with gender socialization over the past few millennia, certain human potentials and characteristics have been subdivided between sexes as the purview of each. Men have violence in that schema.
3 November 2012, 5:30 amLawrence:
“But when we say the church, or the Roman Catholic church, or any other church, we have to remember that these were all the same, single church prior to schisms and Reformation.”
Hey Stan, you don’t want to say why you left facebook?
Second question,
My understanding is that Paul’s writing preceded the writing of the gospels, and Paul barely mentions the ‘Jesus story’ that is so important in the Gospels and in the later chruch, but Paul was apparently building a ‘church’ NOT based on the ‘Jesus Story’ but rather on the heavenly ‘Christ’ story. So how can you say there was a ‘single church’ when in the years following Paul there were many different groups, with different beliefs, and not all of whom (Paul’s groups included) even talked about the ‘Jesus Story’?
3 November 2012, 7:49 amm.c.:
Michael,
{a little more evidence that Roman Catholicism in Nazi Germany was a subordinate force/faction to the more nationalist Protestantism ethos}
from Andrew Nagorski’s fine 2012 book, Hitlerland pp. 265-266. In 1939 on the outbreak of war, Adolf Hitler addressed the Reichstag. He spoke that Hermann Goering and then Rudolf Hess would be his successors, i.e. line of succession. Neither of which was Roman Catholic.
Carl Schmitt, despite having his legal theories borrowed/copied, never was a member of the Nazi high command; the top 10 to dozen positions in their government.
3 November 2012, 12:20 pmStan:
Left facebook because it was overwhelming, and because the quality of discourse there is so consistently truncated that it becomes a sloganeering forum, often for stuff that is … imo… way out there, offensive, or of questionable intent. Plus, I felt almost addicted to it. (-:
My reference was not to the early church, but to the church in late antiquity. By then, it was hegemonic.
The idea of Luther and others who promoted sola scriptura was that simply reading scripture would re-form the ways of the church away from the practices of a corrupt Magisterium. Scholars now can explain why that can never work. All readers do not have equal access to the context in which something is written, and so they cannot equally or even similarly grasp what the original authors meant. An example that is common today… what Jesus said about divorce. It was a provocation in his time, the way he said it, in response to a practice that barely resembles what we call divorce today. But read without study of the context, it sounds like a directive from a Kantian rulebook.
4 November 2012, 7:26 amJAN:
“We know very little about how being subjected to violence for men relates to the self-image of masculinity. And yet men are the ones to suffer most violence (at the hands of almost only other men).”
Talk to any gay man and they’ll give you the lowdown on the subject. There is no group that has been more targeted, except for transgenders, most of whom live under the radar because of the violence they face.
8 November 2012, 10:15 pmcabdriver:
I think that’s an important point, JAN. In that regard, gay men as a category provide the scapegoat- the object of focus for antipathy, hate, shame. And the implied threat of those consequences is held over all of the other males: obey the accepted conventions of masculine image, or else. Conventions like feeling compelled to compete over who’s more masculine, and always having to front, to wear masculine self-awareness as a shield. The insecurity of having to prove oneself in control of the situation, including construing any intrusion into one’s space, no matter how minor or inadvertent, as a dire threat.
Someone steps on your shoe, even by mistake- you shoot them. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But it’s literally happened. Even worse, in some social milieu that response can even be defended as a rational decision- because the absence of massive retaliation is taken for weakness by ones peers. And then, in the parlance, your peers punk you. Nearly robotically, with no more reflection or rational debate on the process than chickens at a pecking party. You got a spot of blood on you- you’re done.
So you shoot- because of what everyone else might do if you don’t. It’s the only agency you have left, to avoid that fate worse than death. Being punked.
I’ve never been to prison. But I’m given to understand that that particular all-male environment is the arena where the rule is the most ironclad.
Strange to me how much influence prison- and by extension prison life, and prison culture- has obtained in this country, in the society of this nation, since I was a kid in the 60s. For the most part, unacknowledged. If the population of inmates has grown four or five-fold over the past forty years, I’d estimate that the influence has increased at least as much.
13 November 2012, 10:15 pmcabdriver:
re: the Nazis- I’ve read extensively on the history, and the roots of their appeal in Germany and Europe. I don’t think they drew from the European institutions of Christianity, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant, or even from traditional Norse paganism (Himmler’s advocacy of “Waotanism” notwithstanding) nearly as much as they did from quack social Darwinism based on racist genetic theories, along with a heaping helping of myth and mysticism, much of it cribbed from 19th century mystical revival sources claiming “Eastern wisdom of the ancients” like the Theosophists, and more esoteric fringe offshoots like the Vril Society and the Thule Society.
What the Nazis mostly were was unprincipled. They used any appeal they could. To the unemployed and working class they were populists, even adopting some left-wing stances (albeit while always making a point of being stridently anti-Marxist); to the German aristocracy they were coy, flattering, “race-conscious”, and anti-Communist; to the military they promised rearmament and resurrection of nationalism; to the defeated German people they put forth a racial mythos of common solidarity; to the conservative Catholics and the Vatican, they represented opposition to the secular trends of liberalism, social decadence, and atheistic Communism; to the Protestants, they proffered Hitler as prison-martyred savior; to the pagan Romantics and the youth, they provided a utopian nativist German neoclassical esthetic. To complete their explanation of social reality, they blamed all of the problems besetting war-defeated Germany on malign pernicious foreign influence- specifically the Jews. The Jewish Conspiracy. Manipulators of the inferior races, all jealous of the Aryan crown of creation.
Whatever sort of ego a given group constituency had- especially as far as its attachment to German national identity- the Nazis knew a way to inflate it. Typical swindle tactics.
13 November 2012, 10:53 pmMichael Anderson:
@ cabdriver on Nazis: thank you for this—forwarding to my list.
14 November 2012, 2:04 pmMichael Anderson:
@ cabdriver on Nazis again: Kinda sounds like the Republican Party in the election! I think the realists/pragmatists (the System Corpos who want to move through the room without breaking the China—pun intended) won this particular round, though. Slow burn vs. fast crash. And showing some scalps along the road.
16 November 2012, 1:43 pmMichael Anderson:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/26/sexism-and-the-new-atheism/
The White Male’s burden…
19 November 2012, 11:31 amMichael Anderson:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/11/19/inside-the-psyche-of-the-1/
Fascinating article. Generally, conditions relative to psychopathic behavior and income hold, but are conditional with respect to cultural factors.
19 November 2012, 12:31 pmMichael Anderson:
Bradley Manning seems to be a pretty together kid. Aside from the more obvious front-page “Security” concerns of the Fascist state (airing the dirty laundry), since he is also gay, I wonder of a knock-on effect of this is to serve a warning to gays, in the military specifically and elsewhere….shut up, serve, kill and praise the system. Another aspect of the disembodied technocratic system of “Choices”.
Immediately, post-9-11, I had the same feeling about Martha Stewart’s arrest on “insider trading”, for what amounted to lunch money for Goldman Sachs’ office crew…a warning to the middle class to have a nice hot cup of shut the hell up, don’t ask questions (or let your kids ask questions) and keep shopping.
“Nice country ya got here, pal….be a shame if somethin’ happened to it. Might have to take care ‘o dat ‘ting over dere and whack ‘em.”
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=9246
Manning Testifies About His Torture; Was it Aimed at Turning Him on Assange?
Michael Ratner: Manning describes cruel and unusual punishment; offers to plea to lesser charges.
1 December 2012, 4:36 pmJorge:
Why Susan Rice?
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/12/03/why-susan-rice/
No doubt about it: Republicans have it in for Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the United Nations and, by most accounts, President Obama’s likely choice to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. Rice is an Obama confidante and advisor.
Let’s be clear: the world would be a better place with her out of government. Like everyone else in Obama’s inner circle, she is a stalwart defender of American supremacy and its concomitant, neo-liberal “globalization.” There isn’t an anti-imperialist bone in her body.
But this is not what galls Republican Senators John McCain (AZ), Lindsey Graham (SC) and Kelly Ayotte (NH), her antagonists on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Neither does it bother that vaunted Republican “moderate,” Susan Collins (ME) or the Tea Party friendly Bob Corker (TN), both of whom have added their two cents to McCain and Company’s anti-Rice campaign.
3 December 2012, 5:15 pmDeAnander:
@cabdriver I like your analysis of the nazi appeal, and don’t forget the gendered message they also included… saving Aryan Womanhood from Those Inferior Dark Savage Types (at the time, Jews and Slavs were, for their purposes, nieblankes). So not only could their adherents be super patriots, they could be Sir Galahad as well… while their mooted projects like eugenic breeding facilities offered a kind of sanitised bordello (or at least the fantasy of same) to the faithful (and genetically approved). Quite a bundle of buttons being pressed there. There’s a book about the nazis and their programme called “Male Fantasies” which iirc explores that side of their PR blitz, the appeal to simplistic notions of masculinity, male power, patriarchal authoritarian nostalgia etc.
It always worries me when contemporary film, pop cult etc. lampoons the nazis as “stupid”. I think that’s a rather dangerous revisionism. It seems to express a comforting belief that bad people are never clever, and vice versa; whereas if history offers me one sobering lesson, it’s that while stupid bad people can be scary, clever bad people are truly terrifying — they have the tools and skills to turn ordinary wishywashy people into bad people. By skillful thaumaturgy (hat tip to the archdruid) new stories can be created that provide scripts and pretty veneers for (to put it bluntly) evil. And the same con game is still happening all around us, in real time.
3 December 2012, 8:07 pmMichael Anderson:
@ DeAnander:
These points are discussed at length in Bob Altermeyer’s book, ” The Authoritarians”, and Lobalewzki’s “Political Ponerology.” In the case of Altermeyer, It’s been proven with 30 years of experiments…
4 December 2012, 2:30 amStan:
Good to have you back, De.
Bad people are never clever is the equivalent of bad guys can’t shoot straight. It’s a comforting story convention that gives a deuteronomical order to the world… that which is, is deserved. Its fallacious cousin might be, if someone is really wrong about something that is important to us, then they cannot be right about anything else. Another one that comes to mind is, if someone is universally reviled as evil, then the demand for accuracy with regard to descriptions of that evil one is suspended in the interest of untempered denunciation. These are all pathetic fallacies of a sort, methinks, that project our own desires onto nature.
Been doing research on several things related to masculinity and war (big surprise, eh) for another book (if I live that long). Looked into Davidic masculinity – ancient Hebrews, the Crusades, the American Civil War (arguably the first modern war), and the masculine phenomena that were associated with the Enlightenment, ie, witch hunts, contract theory, and the Weberian disenchantment of nature.
Efficacy replaced honor somewhere along the line as the epitome of masculine virtue, though both require war for their full proof. In every case, exactly as De describes, archetypical male action was developed and indoctrinated as stories (I’m more and more convinced each day of the criticality of narrative in personal formation). With mass media, quantity phase-shifts into quality; the new capacity to indoctrinate across location and culture. How could GW Bush, eg, have pulled off his cowboy thing without our preconditioning through the American myth represented in the Western genre of film and lit? And how has that changed between generations as the Western has become a more and more minor genre? The last election demographic shift – between young and old – is telling us something. Bush’s masculine appeal was to a man of action and honor (the cowboy myth); and Obama’s masculine appeal was his sang froid and technical efficacy in “killing Osama bin Laden.” Films about gangsters and super-spies have displaced the Western hero, though honor masculinity has made a small comeback with The Lord of the Rings trilogy – as fantasy. Batman is fantasy, too, but again with a special ruthlessness and a command of special technology.
Cultural crit is still key, imho. It is the only thing that unmasks these male story conventions. Not very coherent thoughts, but I’m so happy to see De back that I’m a little giddy. (-:
5 December 2012, 8:09 amDeAnander:
I’m on the run in the real world, but will pause for a mo to say that the Myth of Chivalry — the parable of knightly honour etc. — holds a strained, dissonant place in the contemporary mind. Part of us seems to hanker back to it with longing (at least there were ideals!), and another part sees it as a flimsy, pretty veneer over a baronial order that was just as brutal, bloody and dishonest as the mafiesque present. It’s interesting to see how the treatment of the Arthurian era has changed in popular film and lit: today’s treatment often looks like The Sopranos in Fancy Dress, vs the sugary, Howard Pyle inspired version of the Technicolor years in Hollywood (to grab an example out of my hat in haste). I’m feeling lately like cultural issues are onions: you think you have an understanding of a narrative or trope, and then you peel back another layer…
5 December 2012, 1:43 pmStan:
Hear hear. Right now I am noticing that MSNBC, the media wing of the Democratic Party, is promoting bombardment and invasion in Syria. Gotta write something about that to quiet the voices that urge me to vandalism or worse. Like another fella I know, I am a pacifist because I am a violent man, and I need a community around me to ensure I don’t kill anyone. The devil calls to the devil, and this talk of war wakes up the devil in me.
“When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?”
6 December 2012, 9:42 amMichael Anderson:
More push to war from other places (all over, really)…
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=9236
Wilkerson: Senate Pushes Obama Towards War and Susan Rice a Bad Choice
Larry Wilkerson: The Senate passed a good amendment to NDAA but a terrible resolution on Iran; Susan Rice should be opposed on policy issues, not GOP rhetoric
@ Stan: Don’t do it. You have a community around you. Some of us don’t. Be thankful….
6 December 2012, 3:58 pmMichael Anderson:
“Stinkin’ Thinkin’”….
6 December 2012, 3:59 pmStan:
Just had a moment yesterday… thanks. Just hard to believe that they can cart out the same shit again and again, and each time they get away with it. The media make that happen, and they know that is the service they perform – for outstanding ratings and profits, btw.
Yesterday, the POTUS gave another stern warning, putting on his best I-will-kill-you manface. Ugh.
7 December 2012, 6:02 amMichael Anderson:
That is why I SEVERELY limit my TV watching (but I AM learning how to use spices in food, to good advantage in changing to a better diet! LOL)…it seems to get weirder with every passing week…a noir zombie “Truman Show”!
Speaking of the topic at hand, this article is interesting, as far as some of the conclusions about Marxism go.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/06/cuba-crackdown-vulgar-reggaeton-music?CMP=EMCNEWEML1355
“It is a hip-thrusting mix of hip-hop, reggae and Latin beats, but for officials in Cuba the increasingly popular reggaeton is a threat to proper music and the purveyor of a cheap, aggressive sexuality that demeans the revolutionary island’s “sensual” women.
A crackdown on reggaeton and other unnamed musical styles that are threatening the revolutionary country’s traditional musical culture will punish artists and fine those who programme it, according to Cuban Music Institute boss Orlando Vistel Columbié.
“We are not just talking about reggaeton. There is vulgarity, banality and mediocrity in other forms of music too,” Vistel told the official Granma newspaper. “But it is also true that reggaeton is the most notorious.
“On the one hand there are aggressive, sexually obscene lyrics that deform the innate sensuality of the Cuban woman, projecting them as grotesque sexual objects. And all that is backed by the poorest quality music.”
I do agree with some of this, having played popular music to put food on the table. A lot of the stuff we thought was so cool in the 60′s was really transcendental garbage. I will stand by that statement. Notice I said “a lot of”, not “all”. There were (and are) exceptions.
7 December 2012, 9:54 amMichael Anderson:
Chivalry, in the Arthurian tradition, took a big hit in WW1, the first big industrial world war, as far as the imagery of “traditional” chivalry, which had been heavily promoted in Victorian England…”old masters” looking popular artwork of squeaky clean knights and throwing capes over mud puddles for women to walk on (disregarding the submissive place of women in that particular society). However, adaptations were made quickly. Pilots in the new-fangled airplanes were portrayed as “knights”.
One thing I noticed about WW2 agitprop was that the Am-er-EEK-an G.I. was portrayed as someone with a “job to do”…consistent with the corporate life, which was followed by the submissive 1950′s. This is still present, to a degree, but seems to have been replaced with the 24/7/365 joy of killing, consistent with the NRA-corporate nexus of getting-the-job-done exterminism. At least for the rank and file.
People who’ve been to a frontline know that this is all bullshit anyway. But, they gotta sell death to the proles. Digital technology certainly serves that purpose, reducing humans to holograms.
7 December 2012, 10:23 amDeAnander:
@stan, when will they ever learn — like we were saying on FB about risibly identifiable repetitive plot tropes. if the “new guy in the red shirt” becomes a standing joke among Trekkies, how come the silly manface and “report… WMD… bomb” tapdance act doesn’t become a standing joke among media consumers? because one is “just fiction” and t’other is allegedly reality? I don’t get it! how many times can you play the same bait-n-switch and have it work?
and suddenly I think about JMG’s incisive, funny series “The End of the World of the Week” (a history of EOTW crazes, cults, fads and panics) and the durability of certain tropes, their apparent immunity to critical thought.
I wish that US politicians would pay more attention to the old truism that on the way down, you’re gonna meet all those people you stepped on when you were climbing up…
8 December 2012, 1:46 amStan:
I’m learning a lot about people by having moved from the oh so cosmo RDU to a SE MI farm town, where deindustrialization has left everyone closer to the margins – struggling with both finances and health (farm towns are notoriously sick, and the population is older on average). Most people are just thinking about something else – something to do with how they will get by, and they have gone through entire lifetimes exposed to the same conformist and conforming media. They are intensely nationalistic (the MAIN problem imo… so is the media); even though a good many of them are really decent folks one on one.
8 December 2012, 7:54 amMichael Anderson:
First heard this song by Little Feat in ’73 (one of the exceptions):
On Your Way Down
– Alan Toussaint
Sunrise
Sunset
Since the beginning it hasn’t changed yet
People fly high begin to lose sight
You can’t see very clearly when you’re in flight
It’s high time that you found
The same people you misuse on your way up
You might meet up
On your way down
Vintage wines from the year ’62
It’s your thing, it’s your thing
It pleases you
You got to frown when you cross town
You think it’s an honor just to have you around
It’s high time that you found
The same dudes you misuse on your way up
You might meet up
On your way down
You think the sun rises and sets for you
But the same sun rises, sets and shines
On the poor folks too
I don’t mind you turning round
I myself would even like a little higher ground
It’s high time that you found
8 December 2012, 11:44 amThe same people you walk on on your way up
You might meet up
On your way down
On your way down
DeAnander:
US nationalism is astonishing, isn’t it. throughout most of the UK and EU, as far as I can tell, intense nationalistic pride is considered a bit old-hat, a bit naive, a bit embarrassing. it’s the province of the skinheads and neo-thugs. hmmm. maybe I’d better not go farther with this train of thought, ‘cos it’s kinda scary.
9 December 2012, 1:19 amDeAnander:
btw @mike, “noir zombie truman show” is a keeper, thanks for that!
9 December 2012, 1:24 amStan:
Another Little Feat listener!
9 December 2012, 7:32 amMichael Anderson:
“If you like country with a boogie beat he’s the man to meet
If you like the sound of shufflin’ feet he can’t be beat
If you wanna feel real nice, just ask the Rock and Roll doctor’s advice”
L.F. is one place I “go to church.”
@ De: Thank you!
9 December 2012, 2:35 pmStan:
Da fat man in the bathtub…
10 December 2012, 10:39 ammelo:
dixie chicken!
11 December 2012, 7:38 pmMichael Anderson:
Digressing a bit….a lot of L.F. music dealt with poor folks and ner’ do wells—people on the street or on the edge of polite society, just getting by. The small mammals in the age of Dinosaurs. One of the things about the “bard”, traditionally (not necessarily NOW), is that they were outside of society, and therefore trenchant observers, truth-tellers in their way.
It is heavily ironic that the lyrics quoted above (On Your Way Down), written by a New Orleans native so long ago, ring so true in the wake of the Cheney regime’s abandonment of the poor parts of the city post-Katrina.
Perhaps this should be under the “cultural crit” topic (!)
12 December 2012, 3:43 pmcabdriver:
De: “don’t forget the gendered message they [the Nazis] also included…”
I didn’t mention that factor directly, primarily because it was made obvious to me so long ago that I thought it went without saying. That was a primary subtext of Fascism from its outset under Mussolini (who in turn referenced it from the age-old tradition of personalist dictators and absolute monarchs, which has always been a nearly exclusive male preserve.) I was first exposed intellectually to that connection when I read The Mass Psychology of Fascism, by Wilhelm Reich, as an 18 year old college freshman in 1974. I actually had a Psych course on Reich, in 1974! And in retrospect I bought into more of his stuff than was warranted by the facts…still, I’m persuaded that Reich made some valuable points.
fwiw, The Mass Psychology of Fascism was the first book I ever read that proposed a critique of Patriarchy. Reich viewed the susceptibility of Germans to the appeal of Hitler as primarily due to their authoritarian-patriarchal culture. And he wrote it in the 1930s, as it was happening. (Reich, like George Seldes, was expelled by both Fascist and Stalinist governments for expressing heretical views about the character of the regimes in public.) Not a completely well-formed analysis- for one thing, that problem was/is hardly exclusive to German cultural mores- but still plenty of valid signal amidst the noise.
You can read another quite different viewpoint on rule through the personal force of “virilta” and charisma from neocon gray eminence Michael Ledeen (who has been keeping a remarkably low profile, of late) in his 1972 book Universal Fascism, much of which is devoted to a sympathetic account of the Impresa di Fiume regime led by Gabriele D’Annunzio for a short while following the end of WW1, 1919-1920.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriele_d%27Annunzio
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impresa_di_Fiume#Impresa_di_Fiume
24 December 2012, 10:03 amcabdriver:
correction to above: Reich wasn’t actually physically kicked out of countries, the way that George Seldes was kicked out of Fascist Italy and the USSR. But he was expelled from the German Communist Party upon the publication of The Mass Psychology of Fascism, for failing to contain his criticisms to the Right Wing. Reich also had a harsh view of Stalinism, and that was not permitted by the German KPD. (Reich did denote crucial differences between the motivational appeal and the competing ‘idealisms’ of Stalinism and that of the Nazis. But he thought the results for the human condition were all too similar.)
Reich later fled the Nazi regime in 1934, eventually finding his way to the USA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mass_Psychology_of_Fascism
24 December 2012, 10:18 amcabdriver:
on-line .pdf of TMPOF, beginning on the face page with Reich’s introduction:
“…The suppression of natural sexual gratification leads to various kinds of substitute gratifications. Natural aggression, for example, becomes brutal sadism which then is an essential mass-psychological factor in imperialistic wars. To take another example: the mass-psychological effect of militarism is essentially libidinous. The sexual effect of a uniform and of rhythmically perfect parades, of military exhibitionism in general, are obvious to the average servant girl, even though they may not be obvious to learned political scientists. Political reaction, however, makes conscious use of these sexual interests. Not only does it create peacock-like uniforms for the men, it uses attractive women in its recruiting campaigns. One only has to remember the recruiting posters with texts like this, “If you want to see the world, join the Royal Navy.” The far-away world is represented by exotic women. Why are such posters effective? Because our youth, as a result of sexual suppression, is sex-starved.
If one studies the history of sexual suppression one finds that it does not exist in the early stages of culture formation. Therefore, it cannot be the prerequisite of culture. Rather, it appears at a relatively late stage of culture, at the time of the development of authoritarian patriarchy and of class distinctions. At that stage, the sexual interests of all begin to serve the profit interests of a minority. This process has assumed a solid organizational form in the institutions of patriarchal marriage and patriarchal family…”
Reich wrote that some time before 1933.
http://www.whale.to/b/reich_b.html
24 December 2012, 10:25 amMichael Anderson:
Was reading an article in the local paper about interviewing a gun store owner in the wake of Newtown and all the others this week, where he trotted out the old saw about “an armed society is a polite society”.
To me, an armed society is a repressive, patriarchal society with no future.
24 December 2012, 5:37 pmStan:
Any time I read/hear about sex as a “drive” and of abstinence as dangerous (because the drive will be redirected – like overpressure in a machine), my skepticism light goes off (joke, get it?). My first problem with this is that I have known a number of people who have been sexually abstinent – for periods, or for life – and none of them has ever evinced signs of danger or ‘explosive redirection’ afaik.
26 December 2012, 8:55 amcabdriver:
I can grant the view of the sexual instinct as a ‘drive’- it’s just that I don’t think that human consciousness should be a creature that’s determined exclusively by drives and desires, and hence subservient to them. But the condition of mastering one’s drives is a quite different than the state of repression, where someone is coerced or terrified into denying the existence of their drives, or thinking their drives are unhealthy. And there has been a lot of that attitude influencing human societies, at different times and places. So I think that the critique of Freud- and Reich, his protege- does retain some validity, despite all of the problems I have with them, some of which are deal-breakers.
I sort of snapped out of my allegiance to Reichian thought after pondering Thomas Szasz’s skeptical comments on his ideas. Paraphrasing for the gist of it: “Reich deified sex”, and “he thought we’d have this perfect society if only everyone had these super-orgasms.” I looked around and considered the condition of rampant hedonism and sexual liberation of the 1970s counterculture in which I was enrolled, and had to admit that free and easy access to sexual and sensual gratification was not the Philosopher’s Stone that Reich had posited it to be. But I still view that loosening up as a necessary and important step in a catalytic process that was necessary for my society to go through. But it isn’t to be confused with a desirable goal or ultimate end result.
Reich, a naive idealist, thought that loosening the bonds of sexual repression would eventually lead to universal true love and monogamous coupling, an end to violence and forcible domination, and set human society on a course for the embrace of authentic values and spiritual aspirations. “Sec-economy”, he called it. If only it were that simple.
26 December 2012, 9:46 amm.c.:
Mass-Psychology as a Study/Academic Approach, IMO, is secondary to politics, economics, and history. Reich talks about the mass psychology of the German lower-middle class etc. Valid enough, but the primary focus should be on an historical event like the 1919 Versailles Treaty, which spurred much aggression and anger???
When we talk about psychology, what we’re really saying most of the time is what is Normal & what is Abnormal. Or what is Good/Acceptable & what is Bad/Unacceptable. If you want to make it oversimplistic you could say, what is Good & what is Evil. One of Democracy’s weakness is granting/giving too much authority to Specialists…
27 December 2012, 1:54 pmcabdriver:
I disagree.Policies, agendas, and programs do lead to results and consequences, of course. But politics, history, and economics are merely manifestations. It’s the drives, desires, thoughts and ideals that motivate the design and imposition of those models that is crucial, and the root of both problems and solutions.
28 December 2012, 5:21 pmMichael Anderson:
A couple of links:
http://truth-out.org/news/item/13890-the-second-amendment-was-ratified-to-preserve-slavery?tsk=adminpreview
I honestly did not know this. White Corporate male power indeed. The closest modern analog of Patrick Henry I can think of, off the top of my head, is Jesse Helms.
Related:
http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/17754-the-citadel-a-gunner-s-paradise-in-northern-idaho
Disneyland for “patriots”
The Second Amendment seems to be, using present-day terms, an example of the “GIGO” computer programming axiom—-garbage in, garbage out.
17 January 2013, 4:07 pmMichael Anderson:
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-pentagon-ends-ban-women-combat-20130123,0,4703623.story
Pentagon ends ban on women in combat
You were around before this ban, Stan. What do you think will happen now, in this time and place? Is it more acceptable for women to be masculine and participate directly in the Empire’s killing work now? Or, are the planners just short of able bodies to do the work? I remember you talking about about women soldiers in Somalia in “Sex and War”.
23 January 2013, 5:22 pmStan:
This is big. For lots of reasons. But if this is applied to all units, this is very big. But then it goes against the whole culture, esp in the ‘elite’ units. Rangers are still overwhelmingly white, this far down the pike, so culture will persist. This will be wildly unpopular among the all-boy outfits.
I do not encourage women to join or join these units. It’s still the slaughter machine.
I remember a short essay by Stanley Hauerwas (who teaches ethics at Duke)that said gays were more moral than straights, because they were doing something that excluded them from the killing. Same could be said for women to a degree; but with full inclusion, everyone can be equally immoral! That’s progress!
24 January 2013, 7:00 amMichael Anderson:
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” —-Anatole France—
Progress, huh—law, being the malleable play of words that it is (and we chimps just love to play—games, that is, with words and deeds) sanctions killing by the trainload.
I remember a lesbian couple who were raising a boy (conceived by anonymous sperm donor) in my ex’s university office. I often thought that they were doing a better job than a lot of heterosexual couples, which is borne out by some of the headlines about child abuse I see just about every day.
What was the thread—”criminalization of sin”? Not killing for the state is a cardinal sin, isn’t it?
24 January 2013, 10:16 amMichael Anderson:
Speaking of which, in Japan it looks like getting old is a sin, now, too…especially if you’re not rich…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/22/elderly-hurry-up-die-japanese
“Taro Aso, the finance minister, said on Monday that the elderly should be allowed to “hurry up and die” to relieve pressure on the state to pay for their medical care.”
“While figures released on Monday showed a record 2.14 million Japanese were receiving welfare in October 2012, Aso has led a life of privilege few of his compatriots could hope to match.”
“While campaigning for the premiership in 2008, Aso refused to acknowledge the use of hundreds of allied prisoners of war by his family’s coal mining business during the second world war. He served as president of the firm’s successor, Aso Cement, from 1973-79.”
They are certainly more honest about their intentions, in public, than our ruling elite here. It seems the old Samurai warrior ctulture is never far under the surface.
I know a fellow who admires honesty, even if it’s immoral and evil. Which is a bit like admiring Vlad the Impaler’s results in procuring an obedient population, while giving a free pass on the methods. Efficient? Rational? Diabolical?
24 January 2013, 10:40 amMichael Anderson:
You spoke of the killing machine, Stan—
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/25/us/from-front-lines-women-offer-evidence-on-ability-in-combat.html?pagewanted=2&hp&gwh=DC9F5CA1181CBF6B9A3D839FDFE6EC05
“I didn’t sit around thinking: ‘I’m a woman, I don’t think I can carry this gun,’ ” she said. “And I can’t speak for the men, but I feel that when the bullets were flying, they didn’t care that I was a woman, as long as I was pulling the trigger.”
She added: “I contributed to the team effort. If I can do that, that’s all that matters.”
25 January 2013, 10:37 amkim sky:
A BBC journalist Adam Curtis digs thru archives and analyzes current events thru the archives. His latest post about north africa/somalia/mali.
PARADIABOLICAL
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/PARADIABOLICAL
AND
15 February 2013, 12:13 pmChristopher Dorner — what about that?
Stan:
Sorry about lack of moderation. Been in Arkansas for a funeral.
17 February 2013, 5:21 amMichael Anderson:
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=9868
Looks like there is more to the ways of the Catholic Church than the vagaries of a changing papal curia. Matthew Fox nominated the Dalai Lama for Pope.
16 March 2013, 3:24 pmMichael Anderson:
Front page in the Eugene paper today was an article about gun control. Bills are up before the state legislature here for the usual range of gun-control issues—background checks, no weapons in schools, concealed carry conditions, etc., which will no doubt be toothless by the time they reach the governor’s desk, and the usual invocations of “bipartisanship”. There were evidently emotional demonstrations, both for and against.
I thought the story was really told by the two pictures that were posted on page 1, illustrating both sides of the so-called debate. The first was a back shot (no direct face) of a heavily bearded white male with a stocking cap dressed in some sort of brand-name camo with an AK-47 affixed with a bayonet strapped across his back.
Strangely (or maybe not), I found the picture indistinguishable from what the M.I.C., sycophants, financiers, and quislings describe as terrorists.
The second was a front shot of three women, on the gun control side. I found the contrast telling.
http://www.registerguard.com/rg/news/local/29682515-75/gun-bills-capitol-concealed-control.html.csp
6 April 2013, 12:03 pmMichael Anderson:
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=767&Itemid=74&jumival=10164
Obama visits Mexico
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=767&Itemid=74&jumival=10165
U.S. policy on Syria promotes endless war
The common theme of both of these videos, inadvertantly or not, is creating a favorable environment for transnational corporations to operate. The Syria segment, talking about Daniel Pipes’ statements, he being an arch-neoliberal and hard-core Zionist, are very consistent with Sen. Harry Truman’s statements about the war in Europe pre-Pearl Harbor; that is, finance both sides so they will destroy each other.
This makes me think of Vietnam. After the U.S. left, the country was utterly helpless, the Viet Minh and any democratic forces or movements destroyed by U.S. air power. Mission accomplished, I guess, like Sherman’s march to the sea. Vietnam is now a labor market for transnationals. Read the labels on your clothing.
And the U.S. is now undergoing a (so far more peaceful—relatively) deconstruction to a labor periphery. When will the tanks roll through the streets every day here, running over pedestrians and taking pot shots at innocent people for sport? (Whoops, wait a minute, police already do some of that) When will $40 a month (Bangladeshi wages), a bowl of gruel, and a couple of lines of meth to keep you going on the assembly line start looking good to formerly middle-class white people? Not Joe Bageant’s white underclass/lower middle class, but people who used to have a house, a car, and send their kids to college?
3 May 2013, 11:14 am